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Meira?s bhajan
Job reservations in the private sector is one more bogey being raised with an eye firmly on the political capital it could yield, writes Prakash Patra.
In 1985, a by-poll for the Bijnore Lok Sabha constituency in UP had witnessed a contest that would continue to reverberate decades later. A suave Meira Kumar had left the Indian Foreign Service and entered politics. For the daughter of veteran Dalit leader Babu Jagjivan Ram, widely respected for his administrative acumen and as the champion of Dalits in the Hindi heartland, it was a question of inheriting and appropriating his legacy.
On the other side was Ramvilas Paswan, who had shot into prominence way back in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections for not only being the youngest entrant to the Lok Sabha but also for registering an impressive margin of victory from Bihar.
No one was surprised when Kumar trounced Paswan. And at that time, no one took much notice of the third party in the contest -- a school teacher called Mayawati, a candidate of Kanshi Ram's nascent political outfit, the Bahujan Samaj Party. Back then, Mayawati was seen mainly as a rabble-rouser who abused the upper castes.
Two decades later, the three leaders are still vying for the same space -- to be the sole spokesperson of Dalits. Much water has flown in the Ganga between 1985 and today. Mayawati has become Chief Minister of UP thrice and is currently the defining factor in the state's politics. Paswan has been in national politics as part of governments of all kinds of formations. Kumar remains with the Congress and has again become a minister in the Congress-led UPA government.
Mayawati is bracing her party to face the electoral battle in UP against Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party. Both the leaders are telling their constituents that the elections could take place any moment, although the assembly polls are scheduled only in 2007. The uncertainty in the political atmosphere in UP is casting its shadow on national politics. All political parties and formations are on tenterhooks and are being cautious about their next move.
Returning to Dalit politics in the Hindi heartland, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Meira Kumar has joined the reservations chorus -- the OBC bogey of HRD Minister Arjun Singh. She wants reservations for the Scheduled Castes to be increased from 15 per cent to 16.2 to reflect the last census figures. By the same yardstick, reservation for the Scheduled Tribes should also be increased from 7.5 per cent to 8.2. But the tribals, of course, have no stalwarts like Kumar, Mayawati or Paswan to espouse their cause.
Kumar is quite logical. After all, in the Seventies, the percentage of reservations was increased on the basis of the 1971 census. But Kumar's plea for an increase in the reservation percentage smacks of political hypocrisy. If demography is to be reflected in job reservations, shouldn't it also reflect in the number of seats being reserved in Parliament and state assemblies? When the question of delimitation of constituencies came up, the political class was unanimous in deciding that the numbers would remain the same. Population adjustments would have to be done within the states and not between states, at the national level. The reason: better administered states, which have controlled their population growth rates, will stand to lose. Other states, mostly Hindi-speaking ones, would have gained more seats vis-a-vis the rest.
A valid argument indeed. After all, why should well-administered states, particularly those in the south, lose their representation and clout at the Centre? But obviously, the political class, conscious of protecting its own interests, is willing to get adventurous on an issue that will fetch it capital without assessing it according to logic or practicability.
Job reservations in the private sector is one more bogey being raised with an eye firmly on the political capital it could yield. Here again, the arguments are replete with hypocrisy. Only recently, it had been pointed out that as per law, voluntary agencies receiving establishment grants from the government are supposed to provide job reservations. Has there been any attempt by the government to monitor or find out the status of implementation of this law? But we keep getting told that the government will bring in reservations in the private sector and extend it to the judiciary.
The purpose of Kumar's recent utterances is obviously not the result of her concern for the plight of the Dalits alone. They have a political purpose: addressing the Dalit constituency. After all, she is a prominent Dalit leader in the Congress. With the UP elections round the corner, Kumar is seeking to reach out to a constituency that has been largely appropriated by Mayawati.
Dalit politics in the Hindi heartland has undergone a sea change after the advent of the Kanshi Ram-Mayawati duo. Dalits of UP or Bihar don't look up to the Congress as their 'voice' anymore. From Mayawati's famous 'Tilak, Taraju, Talwar... inko maro jute char' days, the party has been trying its best to reach out to the upper castes to get a formidable winning electoral combination.
Mayawati has radically changed the political structure in UP. Gone are the days when Kanshi Ram had made upper-caste BJP MLAs stand before him with folded hands to secure his party's support to form a government. Instead, the BSP no longer talks of 'bahujan'; it speaks of 'sarvajan'. Disillusionment and disenchantment among the upper castes, with the BJP and the Congress not perceived as real alternatives in the state, could result in a shift of a sizeable Brahmin vote bank towards the BSP.
Paswan, too, tried to follow the same model in his home state, Bihar. He did not mind first going with the BJP and then leaving the NDA to expand his political base. Despite being in the central government, he aligned his new political axis with the Left and the Congress against Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal and the BJP. In the process, he got Lalu defeated. It is a different matter that Bihar's Dalits have been largely appropriated by ultra-radicals, leaving little or no scope for the emergence of a strong Dalit leader in the state. These days, in order to expand his sphere of influence, Paswan is part of V.P. Singh's Jan Morcha Front, where both Lalu and he are sharing the same platform.
A lot has changed in the configurations of Dalit politics and within the space it occupies in the major states and at the national level. The echoes of the 1984 Bijnore by-election fight will surely be ringing all the way to the UP assembly elections. But this time, the seating on the podium is most likely to be rearranged.
